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User Reviews for: What the Waters Left Behind

sp1ti
3/10  4 years ago
I've put this on my watchlist quite some time ago and did not bother to check on it's ratings again... unfortunately as they are a fair indication of the quality here.
This is a South American take on hillbilly horror that is at times blatantly derivative of the classics without adding onto it (and nothing supernatural as the poster might have you believe). While the setting of Epecuén with it's tragic past was a good choice for this it ends up kinda wasted. Now I don't expect an indie to be perfect but without a story or tension to show it's hard to glance over the issues.
The characters are stereotypes if they even got that level of "attention" as some are plain interchangeable, the supposed documentary backdrop does never really come into play nor did they do _any_ planning for this and the use of location/space is terrible with a lot of the events feeling disjointed. Part of that is also the editing as I even paused the film to double check if this was _really_ the uncut version*. Not that additional runtime would have necessarily made it better but maybe there is something missing that would have prevented my initial irritation with it. Still plenty of shots lasting for too long or stuff like unnecessary drone shots included though.
When things (finally) go awry it fails to build any tension in part thanks to terrible music choices, shit sound design and choreography. They apparently also enjoyed some Giallo movies recently so they added in red monochrome still frames at one point but never utilizing them again after that (one guy is even wearing a "Francesca" shirt)...
Their final trump card would have been the cruelty showcased from the bad guys but all those scenes are framed in such a way where it's very clear that you're watching a not so great movie and thereby not carrying much weight. Besides the scene where one girl is strapped onto the rack they are also far less graphic than anticipated (and folks are disposed "quickly" otherwise).
Disappointed.

*The "German" uncut version is 93 minutes and so are streaming versions but IMDb lists this at 98 minutes which is also what the Sitges Film Festival had it at in it's archive (where the movie premiered). I'm curious to know if the recent Unearthed US edition is actually at the full runtime?
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